A Woman's World
Watching, listening and learning is the key to better character writing.
I've been in the Southern Hemisphere for almost a fortnight, the Indian Ocean and southern African winter weather still an improvement on this year's fragile British summer.
I've spent almost every day in the majority company of women, all of whom I've met previously but infrequently as a consequence of distance. Having no sisters or daughters and being the only UK-born person in these gatherings, it's been an interesting time to listen and learn from those born and still embedded within different cultures and environments, especially as the protagonists in my first two novels are both young women, each with their own set of unique, difficult circumstances.
So I wanted to capture the essence of what I've learnt whilst ensuring anonymity. I'm keen to portray some of their lives with empathy whilst retaining a bare-boned simplicity. It's a rare privilege to be sufficiently intimate to portray their struggles and their joy, their losses and successes, their sickness and their health, their pain and their laughter.
I hope my naïve vignettes below justly portray their fortitude, resilience and courage.
JR
A shock of pink hair, pushed in a wheelchair by a devoted daughter who labours only for love. Her money earned amongst an ignorant tide, an inversion no better than what came before. Bitter humour is her prop, but her suffering is clear from the tears spilt on a shoulder as we part.
Life remains a bright candle within a body burnt by a callous sickness whose overcoming took hair, thinned skin and weakened bone. Grace and beauty have prevailed, the light in her eyes and a beguiling smile tell us she's turned the tide.
One in a hundred as a woman, one in a thousand multiplied as exceptional aberration across cultural and professional divides. No downcast eyes, no inbred deference, willing to defend an independence gained with determination and purposeful stubbornness.
Devotion to parental needs can be overwhelming, increasing forgetfulness an additional strain, sharing of memories not always a balm for the pain embedded from decades of what went before. That still goes on. Then they are gone, leaving empty eyries to be filled with what could not be given back before.
Taboo is: singledom and self-emigration; male castigation; menopause and menstruation. To speak is to succeed, silence no virtue when it's used to bind you.
Empty nests need alternative fillings: entrepreneurial leadership and side gigs; a willingness to take risks; confidence which exists in abundance. No assumption that a body which no longer fulfils the need to breed is empty of ideas and vigour; unable to enforce the rigour required to ensure a life well-lived, given poor alternatives of unfulfilled domestic tedium and a husband's occasional kiss.
Your voice is unmistakable Johnathan!
Love this!